Little Women (2019) movie review: looking askance, with love, at a classic

part of my Directed by Women series
MaryAnn’s quick take: A very welcome feminist interpretation of Alcott’s beloved novel, layered in sly, winking awareness of Hollywood clichés and the cultural pressures on women. Alive and electric, an absolute treasure.
I’m “biast” (pro): love the book, love the cast, love Gerwig, desperate for movies by and about women
I’m “biast” (con): nothing
I have read the source material (and I love it)
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
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Did we need yet another film version of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women, which has been adapted for the big screen and for TV at least 20 times, first as a 1917 silent, most recently just last year (though in a very small indie production)? Turns out the answer is a resounding “Hell, yes!”

Writer-director Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, Mistress America) has given us an absolute treasure of a movie, one that is, for a wonder, hugely faithful to the book in the broad sweep yet also skeptical of it in just the right way. Gerwig tells a tale we all know so well with a change of emphasis here, a small twist there, not merely for the sake of something new or to “update” it but to engage in a conversation with the book, teasing out why we continue to love it even with some rather regressive ideas running through it, liberal though the novel might have been in the 1860s. (If you aren’t familiar with the story, this is a superb introduction to it.) This is a 21st-century-feminist interrogation of the book that recognizes the cultural pressures that Alcott was under, as a woman and as a writer, even as she wrote about bucking expectations… and the pressures that Gerwig, as a filmmaker, and the girls and women in her modern audience are subject to as well.

Little Women 2019 Florence Pugh Meryl Streep
“I certainly would have played Jo if there’d been a Little Women movie around when I was your age. But you seem to be handling vapid little Amy quite well, my dear…”

Ingeniously, Gerwig mixes up the timeline of the journey of the March sisters, of Concord, Massachusetts, as they grow into womanhood during and just after the Civil War. This works partly as a smart way to give priority to the more dramatic bits — here’s the youngest, Amy (the tremendous Florence Pugh: Midsommar, Fighting with My Family), already on her exciting European grand tour right at the beginning of the story! But mostly it serves Gerwig’s purpose of looking askance where the themes need some rebalancing… a rebalancing that Alcott would be unlikely to have had any problem with. So literary tomboy Jo (Saoirse Ronan [Mary Queen of Scots, On Chesil Beach], on fire) is already in New York as the film opens, talking with a newspaper editor (Tracy Letts: Ford v Ferrari, The Post) about publishing her short stories, and their conversation — his grudging admiration for her writing, her grudging willingness to accept his editorial guidance — sets the tone for everything to come: sly, layered in winking awareness that this movie is constructing itself for entertaining consumption within certain narrative confines and tropes, just as Alcott was doing with her fiction.

Yet there’s nothing dry or academic in Gerwig’s reading between Alcott’s lines! Quite the contrary: this is a film electric with the task of bringing the March sisters — also featuring Emma Watson (Beauty and the Beast, Noah) as Meg and Eliza Scanlen as Beth — to living, breathing life in ways that feel so very fresh. The meta that Gerwig delightfully finds will, I think, satisfy purists who will brook no deviation from the book as well as those of us who might yearn for a story that can be more progressive than Alcott was able to publicly be. The result is a movie that is timely and timeless, traditional and modern; it’s a very welcome reappreciation and interpretation of Alcott and her novel. Which seems like the best reason to have bothered with a new movie version of it at all.

Greta Gerwig’s delightful meta will satisfy purists as well as those who might yearn for a more progressive story than Alcott was able to write.

That perfect-for-right now feeling is only deepened by some fine performances: Chris Cooper (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Cars 3) as the Marches’ neighbor Mr. Laurence moved me to tears in the quiet moment in which he listens to Beth play his long-neglected piano; Laura Dern (Cold Pursuit, Trial by Fire) as Marmee did the same at a difficult mother’s moment. Laurie, the neighbor boy who becomes like a brother to the Marches, is more of a jerk than we’re used to seeing, which feels like a cheeky tweak to Timothée Chalamet’s (Beautiful Boy, Hostiles) Sensitive Young Man persona by both the actor and Gerwig. Ronan beautifully finds a path among Jo’s passion and temper and intellect that in the tenor of her performance alone is a testament to the conflicting directions in which young women — even today — are pulled. And the jumping around in time means we get to see how extraordinarily Pugh lets her Amy mature from spoiled brat to sophisticated and wise young woman with frequent side-by-side comparisons.

Little Women 2019 Saoirse Ronan Timothée Chalamet
“Look, I love you, Laurie, but you’re such a little punk this time around…”

There’s so much to love here, and much to unpack in Gerwig’s triumph, so I’ll limit myself to one more example of the sneaky brilliance of this splendid movie. By casting Louis Garrel (The Dreamers) as Friedrich Bhaer, Jo’s potential beau, the film takes a marvelous little dig at modern Hollywood, which sees nothing wrong with endlessly casting men as love interests to women 20 years their junior… as would have been the case here if Gerwig had been faithful to the book in this aspect. Friedrich here is much younger than Alcott wrote him, and the actor is only 11 years older than Ronan. Which is still a lot, more than is usual in real life… but combined with the fact that Gerwig also chose to downplay him as a character, she ends up smacking both Hollywood notions of what constitutes an appropriate romantic couple as well as the assumption that the most interesting and most important part of a woman’s story revolves around finding a man.

I’d love to now throw every classic novel about women at Greta Gerwig and see what she makes of them all. I bet she’d do something amazing with Wuthering Heights or, I dunno, Little House on the Prairie. Someone make that happen sharpish.


see also:
what do women want? ‘Little Women’ and ‘Hustlers’ have some answers

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cinderkeys
Thu, Dec 19, 2019 11:13pm

I hated the book, was lukewarm on the 1994 adaptation, and didn’t have much interest in seeing this one until I started seeing great reviews. Your love for it just about puts me over the edge. But …

Without spoiling too much for anyone who’s going to see Little Women without having read the source material, does the movie sell the endgame Laurie ship? Because in both the book and the 1994 movie, it seemed arbitrary—a way to shoehorn in a happy ending for everyone. There wasn’t any actual chemistry.

Also, does Jo’s ultimate career choice make more sense in this movie? I was so annoyed by it when I read the book. So much for feminism.

MaryAnn Johanson
reply to  cinderkeys
Fri, Dec 20, 2019 12:20pm

The book was feminist for the 1860s! But your complaints are the things the movie deals with beautifully. I think you might enjoy it.

cinderkeys
reply to  MaryAnn Johanson
Sat, Dec 21, 2019 10:26am

Okay, now I’m really intrigued. There’s a whole bunch of movies I want to see, but I’ll try to fit this one in.

zak1
zak1
reply to  MaryAnn Johanson
Fri, Feb 07, 2020 5:59pm

Now I’m thinking I’d love to see Gerwig adapt Frankenstein – distinctively exploring from within the work itself how Shelley might have envisioned it

Steve Gagen
Steve Gagen
Fri, Dec 20, 2019 7:15am

Looks like a good ‘un MaryAnn! Hope to see it when I come to London next week!

JackCerf
JackCerf
Mon, Dec 23, 2019 8:57pm

“Which is still a lot, more than is usual in real life.”

True now certainly in an age of contraception, solid independent economic options, and delayed marriage in the educated classes. Not so true then. Marriage was an economic transaction, the woman was a dependent, she got one shot, and she was stuck with her choice. Unless he was born rich, a young man didn’t have much to offer a woman his own age. It took a while for a man to establish himself as a provider. Once he did, he could want a younger woman with plenty of child bearing potential and look like a good deal to her. This comes out clearly in Austen: Emma/Knightley, Marianne/Brandon, and (only almost thank God) Captain Wentworth and one of the Musgrave girls. Even Catherine/Henry, Fanny/Edmund and Elizabeth/Darcy have significant age gaps, though not a whole generation.

MaryAnn Johanson
reply to  JackCerf
Sun, Dec 29, 2019 10:37pm

Have you actually read Little Women?

JackCerf
JackCerf
reply to  MaryAnn Johanson
Fri, Jan 10, 2020 8:37pm

Yes, though long ago. My point isn’t directed at the story but at your assertion that the marriage of a younger woman to a middle aged man is not usual in real life. It was in the 19th century and earlier, for reasons both of economics and of women’s limited agency.

MaryAnn Johanson
reply to  JackCerf
Sat, Jan 11, 2020 5:34pm

Dude… a quick Google reveals that the age gap at marriage for American women during and immediately after the US Civil War is nowhere near the Hollywood notion that 20 or 30 or 40 years between a man and a woman (ALWAYS with the woman younger) is normal.

This shit ain’t difficult. Stop supporting a status quo that never ever existed.

amanohyo
amanohyo
Wed, Dec 25, 2019 7:56pm

This is Little Women filtered through A Room of One’s Own, and it works not by snidely subverting the source material, but by doubling down on its original intent. By telling the sisters’ stories well and powerfully, it earns the right to step back and ask the audience “and why is this simple family story less worthy of being told and retold? Are you not moved?”

The world of the film is cozy, with many a warm hug by the fireplace. The Woolfian commentary is layered delicately above and sprinkled lightly throughout the plot at key moments, working with rather than against the flow of the sisters’ lives. Because of the time skips and all around solid acting (even tax evading billionaire fashionista Emma Watson had me sobbing at her noble poverty and pureness of heart) its social observations about gender relations avoid coming across as preachy or didactic and feel like organic, honest, emotional revelations.

There’s a constant tension between the orange comfy lighting of family togetherness and the cold blues and greys of an unforgiving, indifferent wintery world when they are separated. Gerwig has a fantastic eye for symmetry, and also did an excellent job reusing sets at different periods of time to highlight differences in the moods and circumstances of the sisters. The ending tries to have it both ways, and partially succeeds – I would have liked the independence at the end to be even more emphatic. Everything up to then was perfect. I’ve never cried so much simply watching people being kind to one another.

I have to say though, as an admirer of nerdy women both plain and pretty, in what bizarro universe is Saoirse Ronan considered to be plain looking? Also, Eye of The Tiger was playing in my head during her entire “Writing Montage” and during the credit roll, in the far distance, I faintly heard the immortal words of Moe Szyslak (that never appear in the book) echo across the years and draw a final tear:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlZSxjOTmpI

amanohyo
amanohyo
reply to  amanohyo
Thu, Dec 26, 2019 7:48pm

Writin’ verse, ink on the sheets
Found her rhymes, formed her stanzas
Lost the meter now she’s back on the beat
Just a girl and her quill to survive

Platitudes, they gather so fast
She trades intentions for money
Don’t take your editors’ suggestions too hard
You must cast all your ego aside

Keep the eye of a writer, dip your quill in the night
Lightin’ up all the candles you require
And your last, best revision is at long last in sight
Cause you’re reading it all with the eye of a writer

Page to page, sheet after sheet
Blottin’ ink, writin’ stories
She spreads the pages till she can’t move her feet
It’s a visual sign of her drive

Keep the eye of the writer and your candles alight
Don’t upset one or you might start a fire
It’s the last best revision, let’s just call it a night
Cause she’s hungry and cold and alsoooo pretty tired

(Sorry, it was stuck in my head)

Tonio Kruger
Tonio Kruger
reply to  amanohyo
Thu, Dec 26, 2019 11:19pm

She’s a maniac, maniac with a quill (I sure know)
And she’s writing like she’s never wrote before
She’s a maniac, maniac with a quill (I sure know)
And she’s writing like she’s never wrote before…

(Sorry. That got stuck in my head too)

(Though I suppose there are worse variations…)

The writer awoke at dawn.
She put her heels on…
And she walked on down the hall…

cinderkeys
Thu, Dec 26, 2019 6:31am

Wow. I saw it. You were right. Greta Gerwig fixed both of the things I hated about the book!

(SPOILERS)










I always hated the way the book threw Amy and Laurie together at the end, giving them no reason to be together except allowing Laurie a consolation prize since Jo turned him down, and allowing Amy to have … someone, I guess. In the movie, there’s a hint of actual chemistry.

And Jo opens a school for boys and girls. Not just boys!

I’m not sure what to make of the meta thing with Friedrich, where Jo only marries her Jo character off because her publisher demands it. Are we supposed to believe that author Jo stayed single, as Louisa May Alcott did? If so, I’m a little sad about that, if sheepishly so. Jo was so lonely that she would’ve given in and married Laurie if Amy hadn’t beaten her to it, and while her entire story doesn’t and shouldn’t revolve around romance, it’s possible to find a life partner while fulfilling life ambitions.

MaryAnn Johanson
reply to  cinderkeys
Sun, Dec 29, 2019 10:39pm

Re Jo’s ending: I think we’re meant to see it as a sort of feminist Schroedinger’s fate, in which she is both married and not married. :-)

cinderkeys
reply to  MaryAnn Johanson
Mon, Dec 30, 2019 12:27am

Or that Book Jo is married while Author Jo is not.

Beowulf
Beowulf
Tue, Dec 31, 2019 3:51pm

Here in Dead Center, PA, a film like this (appealing to an older audience) would do well on Bargain Tuesday, so we went yesterday on death-valley Monday. Lo and behold, even at full (matinee) price, the film was almost sold out! And it’s a modern “movie” movie–the forties version was filmed almost entirely on studio interior sets (even the outside of the March home). Boy, GG is quite a filmmaker. Screw the small-minded Golden Globes voters (all 90 of them)!

Bluejay
Bluejay
Sun, Jan 19, 2020 3:19am

Spot-on review. It’s the best damn movie I’ve seen all year.

zak1
zak1
Fri, Feb 07, 2020 2:10pm

This was an amazing movie, and I’d love to see Gerwig do a series of classical adaptations like this as you suggest – a la Merchant/Ivory/Jhabvala

F.T.
F.T.
Fri, Dec 17, 2021 1:40pm

My favourite film of that year.
My second favourite is JOKER.